Mary Ellen was conscious it was their sixth date. She hated the way she couldn't avoid counting them. She wanted to just lose track, but it was proving impossible. She liked Chad more and more as a friend and wasn't sure if she was terribly attracted to him. She liked it when he kissed her good night, or held her hand, but she didn't see stars, either.
He was easy to talk to, and very friendly. Someone her family would really like. She had invited him over for her family's Fourth of July barbeque. That would be their seventh date.
Mary Ellen was on her way to the London Underground from the Port Charles Speedway, where she had been working on her story about the female stock car racer, Quinn Connor Kanishchev.
It had been interesting, interviewing Quinn, and Quinn's father and godfather and brothers. Mary Ellen was interested in interviewing Quinn's mother, too, just to get her take on it, and maybe Quinn's husband.
Thinking of this, she drove to the London Underground.
Chad was leaving work. He walked out to the parking lot at McKinley Engineering with one of the secretaries, Patti Polk.
"So how's your daughter, Taryn?" he asked. "Is she still mad at me for exposing her to Toby?"
Patti laughed. "No, she was dating two guys, now she's dating none in particular, but seems to be happier. How's Toby?"
"Not real happy," Chad said. "He has his moods."
"Taryn tries to flirt with him and he won't open up," Patti said. "So she tells me. But she's sounding like she's not that hurt about it, any more. She has this attitude, that she's given up on men, which she says jokingly, and I hope it is, because she's too young for that."
"Oh, surely that won't last," Chad said. They both laughed.
"And she has a job now, of course she thinks she's mature because of it," Patti said. "She puts all the money in the bank and loves to see the balance going up."
"That's good! Better than spending it on trifles! Very mature."
"Yes, sometimes people can be mature for their age," Patti said, reflectively. "Then sometimes, the same people can be immature for the very same age."
"What about me?" Chad asked, laughingly.
"Not you," Patti teased.
Chad arrived at the London Underground, feeling rather happy, looking to see if Mary Ellen was there yet. He liked having a girlfriend. It was better than having to ask out girls who'd never gone out with you before and might say no or even laugh. Just having someone to do things with was nice. Chad felt that he and Mary Ellen were good friends, and would be even if they weren't dating.
He went to the bar to order a beer. Mikhail was there tending the bar. "Hey, how's it going?" Chad asked Mikhail.
"Good, thank you," Mikhail said, getting out the beer. "And you?"
Chad smiled at Mikhail's formality. "Great," he said. "Is my sister around?"
"Not yet," said Mikhail, but he smiled at the thought, and Chad grinned.
"Cheers," he said, lifting his beer, as Mikhail went to take another drink order.
"Well, what do you know," Chad heard a familiar voice behind him. He turned to see his father, Kent Breyer, standing there with a woman Chad had not seen before.
"Hi, Dad," Chad said, good humor suffusing his face. His Dad was cool. "Fancy meeting you here. I always like to see my dad hanging around at the same place I'm taking my date."
Kent laughed. "This is my son Chad," he said to the woman. He introduced the woman to Chad as Jackie Templeton.
Chad stood up and shook Jackie's hand. "I've heard about you," Chad said. "You're a famous international correspondent come back to Port Charles."
"Yes," Jackie smiled.
"Chad is dating one of the reporters at the Port Charles Gazette," Kent reminded Jackie.
"Oh, yes," Jackie said. "Which one is it?"
"Mary Ellen Delaney," Chad said. "I'm waiting for her now, in fact."
"It'll be nice to meet her," Jackie said.
"You haven't yet?" asked Chad.
"No, the reporters are always in and out and so am I."
"Let's get a drink," Kent said to Jackie. "We can stay to be introduced, and then leave them alone. Nothing worse than one of your parents along on a date."
"Yeah, Dad," Chad grinned.
In a moment, Mary Ellen was there. Chad got up and said hello to her and politely asked her what she wanted to drink.
"And I have someone for you to meet," Chad said.
Mary Ellen felt unexplicably shy to see a handsome older man, who seemed to be an older version of Chad, staring at her, along with someone she thought she recognized as Jackie Templeton.
"This is my Dad, Kent Breyer, Mary Ellen, and this is Jackie Templeton," said Chad.
"Hello," Mary Ellen said, flushing.
"Let's sit down," Kent said.
Mary Ellen felt nervous.
"So you're a reporter at the Gazette," Jackie said, as they sat down at the Circle Line Table.
"Yes," Mary Ellen gulped and started to cough as she sat down. She felt embarrassed. Chad jumped up to get her a glass of water. Mary Ellen did not dare to drink out of her glass of Merlot.
Chad, ever attentive, came back with a glass of water as Mary Ellen managed to recover. She drank slowly.
"Are you working on any good stories?" Kent asked Mary Ellen.
"Mary Ellen was working on an interesting story," Chad said. "About a girl racer."
"A girl who drives race cars," Mary Ellen added, feeling rather grateful to Chad for helping her get that out.
"A female race car driver," Jackie exclaimed. "Fabulous!"
"Yes, it is very interesting," Mary Ellen said, feeling a little more comfortable.
"Tell me about it," said Jackie. "How did she get into it?"
"Her godfather," Mary Ellen said. "He had his own race car. As he got older, he sort of handed it on to her. She has younger brothers, too, but he didn't wait on them, he let Quinn do it when she showed an interest."
"My hero!" Jackie exclaimed. "What a guy!"
"His name's Joe Quinn," Mary Ellen told Jackie. "Quinn was named after him. Joe Quinn is a good friend of Quinn's father, Dan Connor, and he and his wife named their daughter after him."
"That's sweet," Jackie said. "A cute name for a girl, especially with that history behind it."
"So how do you find the Port Charles Gazette now?" Mary Ellen asked, feeling bolder.
"So much more modern," said Jackie. "And the reporters don't hang around the way they used to in the old days. I'm dating myself. Old enough to look back on the good old days."
Kent laughed.
"Why did the reporters hang around more then?" Chad asked.
"They didn't have laptops, and the internet, and they needed the tools in the newsroom," Jackie explained. "You had to talk to your editor in person. Couldn't email him at all hours."
"It all was far more serious in those days, it seems to me," Kent said. "You had to have sources for everything. You would never dream of editorializing in an article. Now it is as if the standards for the social sections and the entertainment sections have seeped into the news."
"Oh, isn't that true!" Jackie looked at Kent. "I did hard news back then, and even for local things, we couldn't just put in what is so casually put in these days. But we're acting middle aged," she said, looking at Mary Ellen. "Going on about how things were better in our day. How do you like working at the Port Charles Gazette?"
"I like it very much," Mary Ellen answered, feeling that she had perhaps misjudged Jackie, or prejudged her, wrongly. "Such a small local paper as it is. It has a friendliness to it. I've never worked for a bigger paper, but I've heard about it. It's like working for a small company that is more intimate and friendly rather than a bigger one that might be more impersonal."
"The Buffalo News can be impersonal in some ways," Kent said. "It's hard to move up right now. So many baby boomers to compete for the top positions."
"Dad is interesting in becoming an editor," Chad said to Mary Ellen.
"Ours is retiring," Mary Ellen said. "After decades"
"Hey, Kent, you could at least consider it," Jackie put in. "Smaller operation, you could bring some forward moving ideas in."
"Yeah, Dad," Chad said. "Get those small town reporters into the modern world," he grinned and nudged Mary Ellen. She smiled back, nervously. She had opened her big mouth and now she wasn't so sure that Chad's father as her editor was the greatest idea.
Patti and Matt were out on a date, having dinner at the Port Charles Grill.
"So how was school today?" she asked him.
"Just a couple of challenges," he said. "To the dress code."
"There's a dress code?"
"Yes, but every word of it is subject to challenge," he grinned.
"I'm glad I send my kids to Catholic School," Patti said. "You just buy the uniforms."
"It's a good idea," he said.
"What's an example of a kid challenging the code?" Patti asked.
"A scarf," he said, "is worn on the head. It has a skull and crossbones on it. White bones on black background."
"Oh," Patti laughed. "They manufacture scarves like that?"
"That's the trouble," he said. "These days, 'they' manufacture just about anything."
"And no rules covers that scarf?" she asked.
"Nope. So it is not forbidden. And how could it be? How would we word the rule?"
"Can you let this scarf go?"
"That's probably the best idea," he said. "That's what I'm for, but another teacher doesn't like it."
"Does it distract you from teaching?"
"Not me. But some of the teachers have this order thing. Then there are things that are stupid, but they distract you. One girl had her hair dyed blonde. So far, so good. Then she comes in one day and all of a sudden it's black."
Patti laughed.
"And then another day, it's green. Or has green streaks in it."
"Oh, no!" Patti exclaimed. "The same girl?"
"Yep."
"Makes me appreciate my dull job as secretary. Maybe let people have their green hair in high school, since they won't be able to when they get out of school and have to go to work."
"True, as I tell my students, there aren't too many employers who are tolerant of green hair," Matt said. "I never thought of it this way, but they are probably taking it as 'wear your hair green now, while you still can.'"
Laraine went into the London Underground late, as she usually did these days. She wanted to be able to walk out with Mikhail when he got off work. It kept her up very late on weekends, but she didn't care.
"Tomorrow, I want to show you where I went to school, and around Port Charles, like we talked about. For a couple hours before you go in to work," she asked.
"Thank you," he said. She liked the way he said that.
She liked the way he did everything. He was gorgeous, and he was sweet. So what if he didn't understand complicated sentences? She had danced with him, and she had kissed him, and she knew that no translation was necessary.
"Your brother Chad was here," he said. "Before you come in."
"Oh, it's too bad I missed him," she said. "But I'll see him later. Was he with Mary Ellen?"
"Yes, and your dad, too."
"No way! Oh, that's funny." Though she thought, it could happen to her someday, too. She didn't like the idea of her cynical, hardered, reporter father testing out Mikhail. Not that Mikhail would fail, just that he would have to experience that.
If she looked into the far future, Laraine could see that Mikhail would have to deal with her family.